


Saturday For No Luck At All

by verygibbous



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verygibbous/pseuds/verygibbous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William asks Otto for tea and pencils when he really means to propose. He gets a concussion from a box of wild punctuation instead. Silly fic that is schmoopy to the point of offensiveness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saturday For No Luck At All

**Author's Note:**

> Typing Otto's accent out was...ridiculous. Also done last summer for a prompt at disc_fest. Cleaned up a bit.

 

 

It starts with a bang.  
  
Well, no, actually, it’s more sort of a weird flapping noise and a couple of expensive-sounding crashes—and it doesn’t really _start_ there so much as continue to exist there but in a more noticeable way, rather like a forehead’s growing prominence in the event of a receding hairline. It’s important to William though, and even if it doesn’t necessarily feel like a bang, he thinks that it should have been one.  
  
William is working a late night at the Times that is, in reality, an early morning. It is summer in Ankh-Morpork and the heat is unbearable even at night. As a concession to this, and with a great deal of glancing around despite there being no one else in the room, he has partially unbuttoned his shirt.  
  
He is currently reading over an article that is either about a fancy luncheon or a recent trend in cannibalism in the upper classes. The spontaneous punctuation, the copy editors’ nearly sadistic predilection for lots of red ink, the foul weather, and the sheer number of hours he’s been awake make his vision swim and his head hits the paper-strewn desk with a solid “thunk”.  
  
There, William just sort of exists and drools for about five minutes before he hears a great crash from the newish basement followed by some very vigorous swearing. His head snaps up, papers clinging in an unpleasantly sticky way to his sweaty face. He hastily peels them off and goes downstairs.  
  
The source of the ruckus—though it is fast approaching a fracas—turns out to be Otto. He is wearing sunglasses and a fluffy dressing gown with tails over his pajamas, crouching behind a black umbrella and flapping it at a bunch of salamanders. When the umbrella goes “pop pop”, the salamanders explode with brief but very bright white light and continue scampering around the basement/darkroom/sort-of-vampire-living-space totally unperturbed. Otto is shuffling around behind the umbrella making a strange, admonishing kind of cooing sound at them.  
  
“I thought you were asleep,” says William blearily.  
  
“I zought you had gone home,” says Otto from behind the umbrella. There’s a particularly intense flash of light and he ducks behind a desk.  
  
William winces at the brightness and hunkers down beside Otto. Absently, he notes that he is wearing the red pajamas with the iconograph pattern. He always does when Otto wears them. They were quite hard to find, after all.  
  
“What are you doing?” he says, rubbing groggily at his eyes.  
  
“Trying to herd zer salamanders back into zer cages,” Otto replies. “I am having a devil of a time doing it.”  
  
“They don’t usually give you much trouble do they?”  
  
“It is zer mating season,” says Otto, making some weird hand motions. “Zey are usually much calmer, but now—” He sighs.  
  
William looks around and spies a few small, sad piles of broken glass around the basement. He knows exactly what they are by now.  
  
“Really, Otto,” he says, frowning, “What made you think that this was a good idea? That’s at least eight emergency vials! Why didn’t you just ask me for help?”  
  
“I zought you had gone home already. I should have known better, in retrospect. You never get enough sleep.”  
  
“Oh, don’t start. Especially not when you’re up at all hours chasing salamanders around in your jim-jams.”  
  
“I am a creature of zer night. I’m allowed.”  
  
“Yeah right. How long have you been at this?”  
  
“Not long,” says Otto. “I just voke up ven I heard zer salamanders running around.”  
  
“And what’s the umbrella for?”  
  
“Protection, mostly. And for trying to scoot zer little buggers back into zer cages.”  
  
“Any success?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You’re ridiculous,” says William, “And you should go to _bed_. I’ll get them all back in.” He paused. “Nothing gruesome will happen to me, will it?”  
  
“Of course not. It’s just a bit…awkvard, is all. Zey are very amorous.”  
  
“I’ll bet.”  
  
Otto doesn’t leave, however, and just sits at the top of the stairs behind his umbrella watching William chase the salamanders around with a broom. He often has to use it to separate the creatures from being too _affectionate_. Otto is trying very badly not to laugh and William attempts to look wounded and indignant, but all he feels is…something. He ends up laughing as well, and all he can think is ‘ _Salamanders are terrible and I hate them and this is one of the most awkward situations I have ever been in and I’m so happy and I would gladly do this all the time any time with you even if you’re snickering at me all the while._ ’ Which, as romantic revelations go, is a pretty bad one, but there it is. The rush of feeling hits William in the heart like a sock of full of pennies.  
  
Later, after he’s shed Otto of his salamander protection gear, William says, “It’s probably quite dangerous for you to stay here, if they can get loose just like that. They might get into your room, and then where will we be? Dreadful business, that. And you can’t keep using up your emergency bottles like that, what if we have a scoop at the seaside or something? And that was quite a lot of bottles, you might be…putting on…weight.” He clears his throat.  
  
“Villiam,” says Otto, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“Ah, yes. That is,” says William, blushing, “you can stay with me.”  
  
“Thank you,” says Otto.  
  
“Right.” William can feel his ears pink, which is _ridiculous_ , because it’s not as if this is new or anything.  
  
“I zink I left my new lens zhere from last time, didn’t I?”  
  
“Oh, yes. Sorry, I keep forgetting to bring it in.”  
  
Otto grins and kisses him once on the lips. “Not a problem.”  
  
  
  


William is fretting.  
  
He’s pacing back and forth in his bedroom, alternating between tugging his tie loose and absently doing it up again. He’s been up since dawn, being too anxious to properly sleep. He worries and fusses and wears a hole in the floor, and before he knows it, he’s already late for work.  
  
When he finally rushes into the _Times_ building, he nearly runs into Foul Ole Ron, trips over a box of loose Q’s, knocks over a tower of some poor copy editor’s paperwork, and almost brains himself on a corner of a printing press.  
  
“William,” says Sacharissa worriedly as she helps gather up the paper, “is something wrong?”  
  
“Not at all,” he says. It’s such an obvious lie that he doesn’t even bother coming up with an excuse for his sudden lack of basic coordination. She rolls her eyes at him and gets back to work.  
  
William goes to his desk and absentmindedly goes through an article that is almost entirely commas before he gives it up as a lost cause and heads for the basement.  
  
“Otto?” he calls out nervously. It’s very quiet here compared to the bustle upstairs, and his voice hangs in the air. It’s quite dark and everywhere are new iconographs being developed. The few people down here are either working on the pictures or having a quiet break from the business above.  
  
“Good morning, Villiam,” says Otto, looking up from something very complicated and fiddly. “Did you need something?”  
  
“Yes!” says William.  
  
A pause.  
  
“And vot is it?”  
  
Another pause.  
  
“I, um.”  
  
“Are you feeling vell?”  
  
“Fine! Oh dear, I seem to have forgotten what I came for, mind like a sieve these days—”  
  
“Villiam?”  
  
“—must dash, lots to do, keep up the good work!”  
  
William flees.  
  
Later, he takes the ring box from his pocket and sighs.  
  
  
  
  
  
“Otto?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Will you, um, will, that is, you. And. And.”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
“Will you m—make some tea?”  
  
“O…kay.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“Otto?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Do you want, er, do you—”  
  
“Vot _is_ it, Villiam?”  
  
“Do you want to borrow these—these semicolons? We…we have a surplus, as I understand it.”  
  
“No thank you.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“Otto, will you—”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“—give me a pencil?”  
  
“Oh. Here you go.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“OTTO, I MUST—”  
  
A crash.  
  
“Villiam?!”  
  
“Mr. de Worde!”  
  
“Who left all these semicolons lying around? I keep telling you all, someone’s going to trip and crack their head right open, and look! Now our editor-in-chief is dead.”  
  
“I think he’s just a bit bruised, Boddony.”  
  
“Should it be all purple like that?”  
  
“Oh no, I think there were some capital S’s in there too. They’re worse than fishhooks.”  
  
“Here, put him on that desk. We’ll clean him up. The rest of you lot get back to work!”  
  
  
  
  
  
William surfaces from the peaceful waters of unconsciousness to the punch in the face of waking. He sits up dazedly and even that small movement sends his head spinning.  
  
“Bwerghlsdfasd?” he says intelligently, lying back down. His head throbs with the dull, insistent pain of unwise decisions.  
  
“Oh, you’re awake,” says a voice. Through the blurry mess that is currently his vision, it seems to belong to a vaguely blond-ish sort of person-shaped blob. This is not entirely helpful.  
  
“Ow,” says William.  
  
“Quite,” says Sacharissa. She shuffles some papers and stacks them neatly on William’s shins before moving on to another layer of copy.  
  
“Are you using me as a desk?”  
  
“Impromptu paper-specific surface, maybe,” she replies. “I thought it would be alright, seeing as you are currently lying on my desk, and I am rather busy.”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“No problem. Just don’t move too much. How are you feeling?”  
  
“Peaches.”  
  
“That may have been a coherent answer. Let’s try another. Do you want a cup of tea, William?”  
  
“Egg whisk.”  
  
“That’s a ‘no’ then.”  
  
“Hello, Sacharissa,” says Otto, coming up to her desk. “How is he feeling?”  
  
“Could be better, but it’s not too bad. He’s a very good office desk, actually. We gave him something for the headache, but I don’t think he’s used to it yet.”  
  
“Otto?”  
  
“Yes, Villiam?”  
  
“Otto, I have something _extremely_ important to say,” says William in a hushed whisper that carries to the rafters and down to the basement. “Very, very important. Super really very of important importance.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“You,” says William with great deliberation, “are a bang-up really extremely good sort of guy.”  
  
“…Thank you.”  
  
“And, and it doesn’t matter how many salamander rumpuses you may cause—”  
  
“Vot?”  
  
“—and I didn’t really mean it when I said that thing about you growing rotund and jolly, I—”  
  
“Are you—”  
  
“—pajamas! And feelings!” says William passionately. “All of them! All the feelings.”  
  
“ _Vot_?”  
  
“Happy birthday!” William smiles blissfully at a stunned Otto, shoves something into his hand, and falls off the desk.  
  
Otto looks at the little box in his hand. Vampires aren’t usually the sort built for gaping, but he has a go anyway. He opens it. There is a ring inside.  
  
“Oh,” he says faintly.  
  
William’s impromptu speech, if you could call it that, and his second fall from grace—or at least, a respectable vertical standing position—has attracted a small crowd. Most of them just look confused or amused about the whole situation, but Sacharissa’s sharp eyes catch sight of the ring box in Otto’s hands right away. She looks surprised and then very smug.  
  
“I knew it,” she mouths at Otto, grinning.  
  
Someone has hefted William up onto a desk again and several other someones are helping Sacharissa collect her copy.  
  
He makes a face and slowly, painfully opens his eyes. Otto is standing over him, still holding the box. The others begin to take notice as well, what with being keen-eyed inventors/tinkerers and nosy journalists.  
  
“Oh gods,” he croaks out. “Did I just—”  
  
“Propose?”  
  
“Er, yes. That.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Um.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
William pauses. “Was that second yes a vague space-filler for the incredible awkwardness of this situation or a confirmation yes for the question in question—”  
  
“ _Yes_.”  
  
“Oh,” says William. He blinks. “Right then. Er, hello everyone. It looks like we’re engaged.”  
  
There’s some clapping, cheering, and congratulations and hand-shakes and thumping claps on the back all round. When the fuss is all over, he draws Otto into the tea room and gives him a shaky but pleased smile.  
  
“Is zat why you vere acting so veird all veek?”  
  
“Pretty much.”  
  
William takes the box from Otto’s hands. The ring is a simple band of gold, nothing obtrusive enough to bother him while he is taking pictures.  
  
“I should do this properly.”  
  
“I have already said yes. It’s a bit unnecessary.” Otto smiles. “But do have a go, if you really vant to. I have never been romanced in such a vay all my life. Have I mentioned zat you are looking particularly dashing vis a big S being stamped on your forehead? And zer bandages suit you very well.”  
  
“You’re mocking me.”  
  
“Not at all. It is making my maidenly heart go pitter-patter like butterflies and puppy dogs. Very svoon-vorthy.”  
  
“Do dogs normally ‘pitter-patter’?” William pauses, raising a hand to his forehead. “A big S? Really?”  
  
“Oh yes, very handsome.”  
  
William laughs. Otto delicately plucks the ring from his hand and slips it on his own finger.  
  
“And voila. Now you must be calling me the passion of your lions and snowflake of your heart and promising to take me avay from all zis.”  
  
“Of course,” says William solemnly. “I shall send for some lions immediately.”  
  
“Good man.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“What do you think?” asks William uncertainly.  
  
Otto stares down at the newspaper, which has been folded up and folded up some more into a neat little rectangle encompassing a few small lines of text. **  
  
**

**The Ankh-Morpork Times**  
announces the engagement of their editor-in-chief  
 _William de Worde_  
to  
their head iconographer  
 _Otto von Chriek_  
Wedding probably sometime next month  
Maybe on a Saturday if the weather’s alright

  
It’s a very small announcement, especially in comparison to the longer, more excitingly-punctuated ones around it. You could easily miss it if you were skimming.  
  
“Are you not going to marry me if zer veather is rotten?”  
  
“What?” William snatches the paper up and squints at it. “Oh, damn, this isn’t the final draft, I wrote this on my hand at three in the morning—how did we publish _this_? Who copied it from my _hand_?”  
  
“How many drafts did you write?” asks Otto curiously.  
  
“One,” William lies.

“Liar.” _  
  
  
  
  
  
Dear boy,_ _  
I see you are once again attempting to drag our family’s noble name into the dirt. Have you no shame? I demand that you cease this travesty at once…  
_  
William doesn’t bother finishing the rest of his father’s letter. It’s more or less the same ones he received for years while attending Hugglestones. The gist of them is that there’s quite a lot of dignity, honor, tradition, and general stick-up-your-bumness to uphold and William isn’t doing his share of it, thus leading the collapse of all civilized society, wild inappropriateness, and probably dead (pedigree) puppies as well.  
  
Once upon a time, they made him feel guilty. Not long after but lasting for much longer, they made him furious—enough so that he could leave home and go to Ankh-Morpork. He hasn’t received such a letter in years and is vaguely surprised that he isn’t livid and tearing the paper into tiny hateful pieces. He’s just annoyed. Extremely annoyed, maybe, but only that. Perhaps it’s just how _stupid_ and petty the content of the letter is or the mindless repetition, but he can only find it within himself to be really irritated.  
  
William shreds the letter in half and tosses the pieces lazily into the bin. It’s no business of family honor, tradition, or even the gossipy hells of the upper class grapevine who he is marrying. That his father is apparently treating the news of his engagement like he’s just heard William was out past his bedtime gleefully pissing all over copies of _Twurp’s Peerage_ is just extra annoying. He doesn’t care for or want his father’s blessing—as if he were capable of such a thing—or even acknowledgement, and he certainly doesn’t want a little slap-on-the-wrist letter from him either, lecturing him as if he’s been a disobedient student.  
  
Then an idea hits him like a trai—express delivery mail coach.  
  
The next morning, Lord de Worde opens his front door and walks straight into about five hundred and seven copies of a very particular edition of the Ankh-Morpork Times. The section he most certainly will not turn to has been printed with an extremely tasteless and extremely pink border of floating hearts and naked cherubs.  
  
Later, he will learn that the paper has been kind enough to deliver a few complimentary copies to all his very important friends and every single one of his enemies (i.e. the members of his extended family).  
  
William gets a lovely warm feeling when he signs his father up for a lifetime subscription to the _Times_.  
  
  
  
  
  
Later, Otto drags William to his weekly Temperance League meeting and doesn’t say a word when he asks him what for. After the sing songs and in the middle of their experience-sharing activity, Otto announces to the group that they’re engaged. His grin is blinding, and not entirely because of all the teeth. When everyone is shaking their hands with very polite but cheerful congratulations, William finds that his gaze invariably strays to Otto, who is standing there bright as can be and chattering away at a mile a minute with the zeal he usually reserves for new, extra-fiddly models of iconographs.  
  
He’s _proud_ , William realizes. There’s a sweet, fluttery feeling in his chest.  
  
“You certainly went on about me,” he says afterwards, when they’re back home. Otto spends as much time in his little flat as they both do for long work nights at the _Times_ that habitually turn into long mornings. “I didn’t know you thought so well of me.”  
  
“Vell,” says Otto. He looks a bit sheepish. “I couldn’t tell zem I vas marrying someone vis a frankly disturbing love of punctuation.”  
  
“It’s important, and you know it is. Stop baiting me. And don’t say it like that. You make it sound so _depraved_.”  
  
“Do I?” The hands at William’s elbows slide down to his waist, fingers hooking in his belt loops.  
  
“Oh, well, that’s—” William’s back hits the wall. He swallows and his eyes follow the shift of pale shoulders and dark hair.  
  
“Serial commas,” Otto purrs, and kisses him.  
  


 


End file.
